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Aubert, Laurent, ed. Mémoire vive: Hommages à Constantin Brailoiu. Genève: Musée d'ethnographie, Infolio "Tabou," 2009. 271 pp., bibliography. Musée d'ethnographie, 65 boulevard Carl-Vogt, Genève, CH-1205. http://musee. [email protected].
Collection universelle de musique populaire enregistrée archives Constantin Brailoiu (1913-1953). 2009. Expanded re-issue. Archives internationales de musique populaire AIMP 85-88. Musée d'ethnographie, Genève, VDE-GALLO VDE CD-1261-1264. 4 compact discs.
Le fonds Brailoiu.
URL: http://www.ville-ge.ch/meg/musinfo_ph.php.
As one of the most important founders of ethnomusicology, the Romanian musicologist, ethnographer, music collector, and ethnomusicologist Constantin Brailoiu (1893-1958) left an incomparable legacy. In addition to articles, books, and monographs, he also left behind valuable theories, teachings, recordings, and the Séminaire d'études ethnomusicologiques at the Sorbonne, which he started (Schaeffner 1959). Having left Romania for France and Switzerland during World War II, Brailoiu built what is known as "his" Archives internationales de musique populaire in Geneva, now held at the Musée d'ethnographie under the supervision of ethnomusicologist Laurent Aubert. In celebrating Brailoiu's achievements, in 2009 Aubert produced a World Collection of Folk Music multimedia extravaganza that includes: an exhibition, a book entitled Mémoire vive, the long-awaited release on CDs of the Collection universelle, and, quite unexpectedly, the revolutionary online access to the digitized archives. This review concerns the last three components.
The Collection universelle, first published on forty 78-rpm discs between 1951 and 1958 (Collaer 1957), was republished as six 33 1/3-rpm discs in 1984 (Blacking 1988). The entire collection, recorded 1913-53, is now available as a set of four CDs (including the 1984 preface by Jean-Jacques Nattiez now available as a PDF document). The Fonds Brailoiu was gathered by Brailoiu himself at the Museum until his death and accounts for 3028 often quite short recordings.
One must confess that the online collection is complex and even confusing because the content is huge. Most of the so-called archives and collection are not, in fact, recorded by or even for Brailoiu. They are not ethnomusicological recordings in the modern sense, but are commercial recordings. Very often the sources were not...